TEESSIDE AND CO DURHAM FIRST VISITS IN 2016

An earluy start to beat the worst of the rush hour traffic, I left Mandy behind to start the battle with VW about the broken down van and the 4th fuel injector. She spoke to their head office who agreed that it all sounded a horror story and the Manchester VW van centre have 24 hours to come up with a response to our complaint before the head office takes over the case. I think the blatant lies are the worse part of the saga. Anyway hopefully we'll get the van moved to Manchester even if the AA have to come back to complete the journey, as they were shut Saturday afternoon when we got back  and there is nowhere to leave the vehicle we were stuck with it. If we get it away for a week or two it will help when I'm doing the restoration work on the drives. I need to go out and pick up some readimix mortar, I've now got the concrete repair kit as well. Mandy and i will take it in turns going out until we've got the van sorted.

Anyway back to today, I had a steady run up the M6 and across to Scotch Corner on the A66, the sky was clearing as I reached Co Durham so i decided I'd cover Darlington first as it's closest. The sun was fully out which isn't too much of a problem by the market for photography. There was precious little new and really the bus scene there with almost entirely Arriva is pretty dire and not that busy just a couple of core routes with similar vehicles which give continuity. Marks & Spencers have started to open their cafe later , 30 mins later to 9am which is a bitch as we often get a brew and cake before i start filming, all part of the steady decline of M&S, give them another decade and they will have gone the way of Woolworths etc. After completing an hour or so of film on Darlington I moved on to Middlesbrough refueling as I went. The sun was out pretty much all the time, still photos are a bitcvh as the light is usually to one side straight on but video was easy, as busy as ever but declining number of deckers and even here variety is limited and litle or nothing new to see. A couple of other enthusiasts around but neither looked like having a chat.

The last stop of the day saw me up the A1 at Durham where variety and new buses were the by word of the day which made up for earlier boredom. This does leave parts of Co Durham still to be covered Chester le Street, Stanley, Conssett, Bishop Auckland all in my sights this year. We are having a few days up in Northumberland to cover the north of the region up to the border. It was sunny at times then cloudy and a few spots of rain, I thought the A1 south would be clear as they were working on the upgrade years ago but I slipped up, they are making it a lifetime's work and so 50mph for nearly all the way to Leeds. Sorry photo loader not working ( again!)
At home the bids on the cine film have mounted up all day so several hundreds of pounds certain to be coming in which is a good job with the van to sort. I'll try photos again in the morning.